Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

The government has exaggerated progress on its plan to reinvigorate the City of London, the chair of the Commons Treasury select committee said, as she called on the ministers to speed up delivery of the so-called Edinburgh reforms.

But City minister Bim Afolami rejected the criticism of the pace of implementing the policies and vowed to do everything in his power to deliver them in full before the next general election.

Last December, ministers unveiled a 31-point plan to boost the UK’s financial services sector in the wake of Brexit, as part of an initiative initially billed as Big Bang II.

Harriett Baldwin, head of the Treasury select committee which scrutinises the expenditure and policy of the department, told the Financial Times the package of reforms had not proved as “major as had been presented” and that headway had been slow.

She made the comments ahead of the release on Friday of a report by the committee into the government’s progress on delivering the full suite of the Edinburgh reforms.

While the government has repealed controversial rules to cap bankers’ bonuses, the reforms have failed to stem an exodus of companies from the London Stock Exchange. Most recently, Tui, Europe’s largest tour operator was considering delisting in the latest blow to the UK market.

Baldwin, Conservative MP for West Worcestershire and a former economic secretary to the Treasury, said six of the “achievements” claimed by the government were for things that had not yet been completed.

Another six related to pledges such as launching consultations rather than implementing reforms.

“We gave them [the Treasury] slightly lower marks than perhaps the chancellor marked himself in [an assessment] in September,” Baldwin said, referring to the committee’s findings.

“The overall impression I think one gets . . . is there have been some measures that have been completed but quite a lot of them have not been legislated for or implemented yet.”

She added that she would advise new City minister Afolami “to be absolutely relentless in . . . completing the things that were set out”. 

Afolami in turn stressed his huge respect for Baldwin, adding: “What I would say is that . . . we’ve done 22 of the 31 things we have promised. All of these things take time to really come to fruition and, to be honest, I don’t apologise for that.”

The City minister and economic secretary to the Treasury said: “We’re not saying that all of these reforms are going to absolutely fix everything in one year, but that these provide a key foundation for the medium- and long-term success of the City of London.”

Asked if he expected to deliver the full package within the term of this government, which has to call an election by January 2025, Afolami said: “That’s what we’re working to do, we are absolutely trying to deliver these as quickly as we possibly can.” 

Baldwin said listings reform was an “important piece of work” amid continuing losses to London’s equities markets, a situation she described as “worrying”.

The government has taken action including overhauling prospectus regulation, consulting on scrapping short selling bans on government debt, and taking steps to repeal regulations on packaged retail and insurance based investment products, known as PRIIPS.

Baldwin called out proposals to reform the UK’s post-crisis personal accountability regime, saying the process was “slowing the progress and growth of the [financial] sector”. Regulators have launched a discussion paper on the topic while the government has issued a call for evidence.

Baldwin also called for clarity “one way or another” on what the government is planning to do with the ringfencing regime that forced the separation of large banks’ retail and trading arms after the financial crisis.

A call for evidence was launched in May and the government has promised a response in the first half of 2024.

Hunter Biden has been indicted on nine tax-related charges, including three felony counts, according to court documents filed Thursday in a federal court in Los Angeles.

The 56-page court filing laid out a series of charges, including allegations that the president’s son failed to pay taxes, failed to file, evaded an assessment and filed a fraudulent form. The indictment alleges that “rather than pay his taxes, the Defendant spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle.”

“Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, the Defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment said.

The charges, which include six misdemeanor tax offenses, were brought by special counsel David Weiss. The case was assigned to Judge Mark Scarsi, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

The maximum penalty the president’s son could face if convicted is 17 years in prison, according to Weiss’ office.

“According to the indictment, Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns,” Weiss’ office said in a news release.

The White House declined to comment on the charges and referred NBC News to Hunter Biden’s personal attorneys as well as the Justice Department. The attorneys did not immediately provide a comment.

A White House official said they learned of the charges from public reporting and did not have advanced notice.

The indictment does not appear to reference President Biden or his role as president or vice president.

The additional charges against the president’s son mark a significant development in a federal investigation that has drawn scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have seized on Hunter Biden’s legal woes as rhetorical ammunition against his father. House Republicans subpoenaed Hunter Biden in November, and his legal team has said that he’s open to testifying publicly before the House Oversight Committee next week.

“The first sweetheart deal came after whistleblowers came forward,” said a source familiar with the House GOP investigation into Hunter Biden. “Now Weiss files charges on [the] eve of Hunter Biden testimony and after the whistleblowers testified again. No such thing as a coincidence in Washington.”

In July, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to federal tax charges following the collapse of a plea deal. A federal judge dismissed the misdemeanor charges in August. He had originally been expected to plead guilty to two federal misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes.

Hunter Biden was indicted on federal gun charges in September related to the president’s son being in possession of a gun while using narcotics. Two of the counts allege that Biden completed a form saying he was not using illegal drugs when he bought a gun. Another count asserts that he possessed a firearm while using a narcotic. He pleaded not guilty.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel in August to oversee the investigation into Hunter Biden.

“As special counsel, he will continue to have the authority and responsibility that he has previously exercised to oversee the investigation and decide where, when and whether to file charges,” Garland said when announcing Weiss’ appointment. “The special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department, but he must comply with the regulations, procedures, and policies of the Department.”

Weiss was nominated by Trump in 2017 and started serving as U.S. attorney in Delaware the next year. He remained in office through the start of the Biden administration, even as most U.S. attorneys appointed during the Trump administration were asked to resign.

On Monday, Weiss asked a federal judge to deny Hunter Biden’s request to subpoena Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other Trump administration officials.

“His allegations and subpoena requests focus on likely inadmissible, far-reaching, and non-specific categories of documents concerning the actions and motives of individuals who did not make the relevant prosecutorial decision in his case,” Weiss’ team said.

President Biden is expected to attend fundraisers this weekend in Los Angeles, the city where the charges against his son were filed. The trip was planned long before Thursday’s indictment.

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the EU trade myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lashed out at French “protectionism” on Thursday in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s sharp criticism of a pending trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American nations.

The exchanges added to the last-minute setbacks the agreement — which has been 20 years in the works — has faced in the past week.

Lula said during a summit in Rio de Janeiro of Mercosur nations: “I appealed to Macron to stop being so protectionist [but] it’s not just a case of Macron. All of them [French presidents] are protectionist when it comes to their agricultural products.”

Diplomats from both the EU and South American group that includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and new member Bolivia had hoped to announce the successful conclusion of the long-delayed “cows for cars” trade deal at the gathering in Rio.

But Argentine diplomats backed away from talks, saying they had lost their mandate to continue negotiations given the election of the new Javier Milei administration in Buenos Aires.

Then Macron earlier this month came out vocally against the deal, saying he opposed it and that it was “completely contradictory with what [Lula] is doing in Brazil and with what we are doing”.

“It’s a deal that was negotiated 20 years ago and which we’ve tried to mend, and which has been badly mended,” said Macron, adding he was concerned about the lack of environmental targets.

The comments frustrated EU and Mercosur diplomats.

Despite French opposition, however, diplomats involved in the negotiations say the deal is not dead and the new Argentine administration has signalled its interest in completing the treaty after it takes office on December 10.

“It’s just a matter of giving the new government in Argentina time to assess the situation,” said a senior diplomat involved. “The new Argentine foreign minister came to Brasília and made clear that the new government would support closing the deal even now.”

“People were led to the conclusion that Macron’s statements had a direct impact on the negotiations, which they don’t. It was crafted for his domestic audience. The authority to negotiate these agreements is up to the [European] commission.”

Lula echoed the comments on Thursday, saying: “We need to keep trying to get this agreement done . . . I had a dream that in my presidency and that of [Spain’s] Pedro Sánchez, in the European Union, we could conclude the negotiations.”

The leftwing leader also criticised a provisional 2019 version of the trade deal, negotiated by his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. Lula said that agreement, which has since been substantially modified, “treated us as if we were an inferior, even colonised people”.

Negotiations this year were dominated by an EU demand for additional environmental commitments from South America. The Mercosur nations rejected this as protectionism from Europe, fearing competition from agricultural and wine exports.

Last month, diplomats involved in the talks said they hoped to overcome the issue by crafting a “middle-ground instrument” that would represent a compromise between both sides.

A joint EU-Mercosur statement released on Thursday said: “Considerable progress has been made in the past months. Negotiations continue with the ambition to conclude the process and reach an agreement.”

Despite the setbacks with the EU, Lula hailed Bolivia’s official accession to Mercosur on Thursday as well as the bloc’s signing of a trade treaty with Singapore as “a sign that things continue to work”.